


what loves me

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, I dont know., Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), i cant say if anyone else would enjoy this but it is about being trans and body horror, its the corruption btw, or maybe if youre not trans! its about bodies and also about love a little, so if youre trans and you like tma maybe this would be up your alley, yes its my fearsona. okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24617818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Statement of Tatum Corsi regarding their relationship with… roaches. Statement taken directly from subject--uh. Just, statement taken directly from subject.Statement begins.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 13
Collections: Anonymous





	what loves me

Statement of Tatum Corsi regarding their relationship with… roaches. Statement taken directly from subject… uh. Just, statement taken directly from subject.

Statement begins.

I probably should have ended up with the Flesh. It makes more sense, doesn’t it? The… you know, I could dance around it, make it poetic, but the gender dysphoria. Really, it would make sense. Change everything that felt wrong. Get taller or shorter when I felt like it, lose the chest, the hips—or bring them back if I wanted, who knows. Maybe make my hands a bit bigger, my shoulders broader, you know. I could probably work out a way to get my voice to change, too. Either get the vocal cords to move around in there, or just steal someone else’s.

Not that I would. Maybe that’s why I didn’t end up with the Flesh—because I’ve spent too long feeling like something was wrong with my body to damn anyone else to that. You know I can’t get the, the—the laser-cut cheekbones I want without putting my own back in some other poor motherfucker. 

Or just leaving them without, I guess, but then what would I even do with my own cheekbones? Make jewelry out of them or something? I don’t wear jewelry. I might if I had the cheekbones for it, though.

That’s another thing, I don’t think cheekbones are their own thing, I think they’re just part of the skull, which is like, one bone. Maybe that’s why I’m not with the Flesh—I don’t even know what’s in there. I’d try and grab someone’s gallbladder and find out that’s not even a thing. Gallbladders are real, right? 

It’s not important. I’m off track. Or I guess I’m not, that’s how this works, isn’t it? I tell you what it is you need to hear? I don’t know. I’ll just keep talking.

I used to be really, really scared of roaches. I’d see a big one in my room when I was little—B-52s, do you know what those are? I bet you do, you can probably See them if you want. I don’t know if they’ve got a proper name, but they’re these big flying motherfuckers and they’re disgusting and terrifying and they don’t fear death. If you come at one with a book or whatever your weapon of choice is—or a glass to trap them if you’re a humanitarian, I guess—well, whatever you use, they will fly right at your goddamn face. Anyway, because of that, I’d see a big one and I’d be afraid to kill it. I’d like, creep around it for an hour, trying to keep it from running off and laying a clutch of eggs somewhere but also trying to get close enough to throw something at it and kill it without it coming at me. 

And, like—I was so, so scared of one getting near me, of touching me, but what would it even do when it got there? Roaches don’t bite or sting or have any way of hurting you. I used to theorize that they evolved to just look naturally— _wrong,_ somehow. That there was something inherent in the way they looked that was a defense all on its own. Roaches are repulsive, but that repulsiveness is weaponized. 

Gutsy little guys.

Do you see what I’m getting at yet?

I used to be scared of roaches until I started going for long walks at night, just wandering for hours, and that’s when the roaches run around too. After the fiftieth time one ran over my bare foot, I mean—it’s just hard to be grossed out after a certain level of exposure. I gained a, a mutual respect for them, you could say. Night was sort of our time. Me and the roaches, hanging out where no one could see us.

The thing is—I don’t hate the way I look. Looked. I didn’t hate it. If I was somebody else, I’d probably say I was attractive. And yeah, I hated—the way looking like that made me feel, but changing the parts I could made me feel electric. 

Do you know what it’s like to walk around with a big stupid grin on your face feeling blazed out of your mind because of a haircut? Do you know what it’s like to put a weird, uncomfortable little shirt on and become totally invincible? To tug on some shoes that make you an inch taller and suddenly know you could crush anybody in your way?

Do you know what it’s like to dream about needles and going under the knife and wake up with a fire in your chest, practically crying with want, head dizzy with desire, clutching a secret flickering rhythm of _someday, someday, someday…_

Well, maybe you do. I don’t know you, you might. If you do, we should hang out sometime.

I liked changing myself, but. But—hm. Give me a second, I’m not sure how to put this. 

You know in _Beetlejuice,_ when the couple first tries to embrace the whole ghost thing, and goes to scare people? And they stretch their faces out all grotesque, and the guy yanks his skin into a beak, and shoves his hand out the back of his scalp like a glove with the skin pulled taut around it, and sticks his eyeballs on his fingers? And the lady pulls her jaw up and out of her mouth, protruding, and her skin bunches up behind that big ugly mass of flesh, and she has too many teeth and they all jut out of her gums like they’ve just forced their way through the meat, and her tongue gets all long and fucked up? 

You know what I’m talking about, yeah? What I’m saying is—why is that scene gross? Because it is, it’s objectively ugly to look at, and I know I sound like I’m shilling for the Flesh but just stick with me here. It’s gross not because they look like they can hurt you—or because they hurt while they’re molding themselves—but because that’s just.

Not how a body goes. 

Humans like—they like formats, right, they like understanding things. You know what I mean, Archivist, we have these templates, these categories and formulas that say—this is what this looks like, and this is how this goes, and we like sorting things into boxes. I mean, I like it. We like the familiar, don’t we? 

And we look at the couple in that movie and we say, well, that’s not how a body goes—and, and that’s what makes it repulsive. Not—fear of pain, or of mutilation even, not really. Not even quite the Stranger. We know what they are and how they did that to themselves, we just—we don’t _like_ it.

And I didn’t _like_ roaches. 

And sometimes, when I walked around looking the way I wanted, people didn’t _like_ me.

Not their fault, really. I don’t blame them. There’s, you know, a way they expected me to look, and I didn’t. That’s just how humans work, I guess.

So, it’s—it was hard. I don’t like being lonely, Archivist. I don’t like being alone very much at all, I mean, I like my privacy and all that, but. I like people, but they don’t always quite like me back. And sometimes, when they look at me, I know what they’re seeing isn’t what I want them to see—what I know they would see if things were right—and.

And I don’t _like_ it. 

I like being seen. I mean, don’t we all like attention? Even if we don’t like our faces, we all still… have Twitter accounts, or whatever. We get what we can stand. And I do like my face, with certain caveats.

I like not being alone, and I like being seen, but I don’t always like people. So I found some non-people to see me. To be with me.

I found something that would understand the, the wrongness, the feeling wrong inside yourself and knowing you’re inflicting a feeling-wrong on those around you. I found something that knew how to be repulsed and be repulsive and reveled in it, rippled with it, something that crawled and shifted but didn’t hide, something that didn’t know the feeling of being ashamed, something that understood that while it didn’t hurt people, it was still hated, and that it could take that hate and turn it back, make it a weapon, make it a threat.

You see what I’m getting at now, right? 

I let a bunch of roaches live in my guts. 

Not that you didn’t know that already, I’m sure. I mean, my skin’s full of holes—you’ve noticed, hard not to—and what I do have left is tinged a, a kind of greenish color? I might be rotting, I don’t really know. It doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t feel bad, exactly, so I’m sort of just leaving it and hoping it’s fine. Not sure if I can die, anyway, what with… you know, the general state of. Everything. I really don’t think I even could have died before. Not from this, at the very least.

I found the roaches in my own backyard, Archivist. I went and I walked around the yard in the dark one night, and I realized that everywhere I stepped they would swarm up in my wake, little black bodies gleaming in the dull light of the neighbors’ windows. I assume my footsteps probably just disturbed where they’d been hiding down in the grass, but I like to imagine they were coming up for me. That they recognized what I was.

I paced around and watched them burst up, movements just as unnatural as they’d always been, until the yard was teeming. Then I laid down in the grass and I closed my eyes and I became something else.

Jane said this thing once. _I am a home. I can be fully consumed by what loves me._

I’ve never felt at home in my body, but maybe that’s because I was always the wrong occupant.

And it is about love, it's about what loves me, it’s always been about love for me. Beyond gender, beyond bodies, beyond all of it—I’m selfish and love takes work. Devotion takes work. You can’t just hand yourself to someone and expect them to take you. 

Learning how to understand someone, how to love them and be loved back, it takes effort, and it’s painful, and it takes so long. To lay it all out piece by piece takes so long and it takes so much delicacy and you can get it wrong so easily. Knowing someone inside and out is an arduous process. It’s not as easy as just ripping yourself open.

Not with people, anyway. 

I’m selfish. So I ripped myself open. I’m selfish, so I handed myself over knowing I’d be taken. I let myself be loved and be consumed by a big pile of bugs. And I managed to satiate some other needs of mine along the way. 

I feel pretty good about it. I don’t have to worry about being lonely or anything, and people see me as a rotting infested corpse instead of something with a gender, which is nice. I got the changes I wanted, too. Roaches are pretty good at moving, um, flesh around.

That’s… that’s all, I guess. I hope this helps, somehow? Like I said—I don’t think I could have died anyway before the, you know, apocalypse, so I’ll be fine if you end it or fix it or whatever. And I love my roaches, but I don’t just want to hang out with exclusively bugs forever. I miss Twitter.

I’d offer to do something more for you, but I don’t really “do” anything these days aside from sit around and chill with the roaches, so. 

Good luck out there.

Statement ends.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah the thing with roaches crawling outta my footsteps did happen to me but unfortunately i did not lie down in the grass and become a sexy genderless flesh hive, so
> 
> leave a comment if you vibed with this i wanna see if my experiences are universal


End file.
